Chapter 5

Chapter 5

University put me under crushing pressure.

All four of my older siblings had graduated from prestigious schools and built successful careers. As the “miraculous product” of my parents’ great love, I carried the hopes of two families. Yet I had failed one entrance exam and performed only passably on the next, becoming what felt like the sole blemish in my parents’ perfect life.

So I competed desperately. Grades, contests, student organizations-I did not dare neglect any of them. I spun like a top beneath an invisible whip, unable to breathe.

During that period, I inexplicably fell in love with heavy metal. The deafening drums and distorted guitars in my headphones became the best barrier between me and everyone else’s expectations.

Cen Juan was as unconventional in university as he had been in high school. His short hair changed color constantly, and several equally striking friends followed him everywhere. They formed a band with a name so long and awkward that no one could pronounce it. Their concert notices appeared occasionally on the campus forum, all black posters and violent lettering, advertising a half-underground live house behind the university. Almost no one went.

Then came the freshman welcome gala. For reasons no one understood, the student union let them take the stage.

I sat in the audience, numb from study and pressure, until they appeared. The opening was not the meaningless screaming I had expected. The melody seized me. The rhythm struck like a violent rainstorm.

Cen Juan lowered his head slightly, his fingers blurring across the strings. His voice was low and rough, yet it pierced every layer of noise.

For that moment, he seemed to shine-not with the socially approved glow of my successful siblings, but with something pure, blazing, and almost painfully free. It was everything I had longed for and never dared to touch.

After that, I became a regular at the band’s performances. The venue was small, the audience sparse, and I was usually the most conservatively dressed person there. I often arrived straight from a group meeting with my laptop still in my backpack.

One day, during a sound check, Cen Juan’s gaze swept over me and stopped. He seemed to recognize the honest classmate who had once given him a pineapple bun. During the break, he walked over with a bottle of water, damp bangs resting on his brow, and held out his QR code.

“WeChat. I’ll tell you about the next show.”

I scanned it. From then on, my contacts included someone who lived in another world.

He messaged whenever the band had a new song or performance. His social feed remained full of mystical gloom and poetic heartbreak.

Meanwhile, the net of grades, internships, and my parents’ unspoken expectations drew tighter. Listening to music was no longer enough. I wanted a more primitive release.

I tried dating two men. Both looked good on paper. One was too mild, the other too slick; even holding their hands bored me.

One night, I saw another blurred silhouette on Cen Juan’s feed captioned, “An island has no need of shore.” On impulse, I opened our chat. “I want to hear music. Can I come find you?”

He truly gave me a private concert that night. In the cramped rehearsal room, I was his only audience. Light flashed from the new stud across the bridge of his nose.

An idea broke through the soil of my mind.

Him. At least he would not be boring.

I assumed he was experienced. We could take what we needed and leave without entanglement. So I offered several supposedly subtle invitations.

“Want to see a midnight movie?”

“I know a good bar. Shall we go together?”

To my surprise, he understood nothing.

After serious consideration, he replied, “Staying up late is bad for you. You should sleep more.”

And, “A singer has to protect his throat. I can’t drink too much. You should drink less too.”

I stared at the screen. My hints were not that subtle, were they?

Several more tests proved that his mind simply had no track leading in that direction. My original desire faded, replaced by curiosity.

I put away my schemes and courted him properly for three months, in the most old-fashioned, unobtrusive manner imaginable. Because he forgot meals during rehearsals, I brought a thermos every day, never repeating a soup. Because he lived carelessly, I supplied everything from throat lozenges to socks.

At last, one of his bandmates messaged me privately. “Sister Mianzhi, forgive me for asking, but are you trying to sleep with Brother Cen or become his mother?”

I stared at the screen for ten minutes before replying with an inscrutable meme.

Cen Juan, however, loved that kind of care. Before long, his romantic brain took over and he fell completely.

He was desperately clingy and unexpectedly innocent. The first time we held hands, the red spread from his ears down his neck. Still, he growled, “It’s just a hand. What’s worth holding?” Then he squeezed so tightly the whole way that I could not have shaken him off.

The day we made our relationship official, he pinned me in a backstage corner crowded with equipment and kissed me. His breath was hot and ragged; every ornament on him jingled. I tipped my head back, struggling for air, and thought: what wild dog?

He was a little stray no one had ever wanted. Give him one sweet thing and he would follow you home.

That night, I took him to my rented apartment to inspect the goods.

He truly was innocent. A kiss left him breathless, his eyes damp like a bullied puppy’s. Yet he was also remarkably open-minded, quick to learn, and gifted at applying every lesson.

Most surprising of all, he did not insist on control. For someone who looked so untamable, he was extraordinarily obedient in private.

When I said stop, he stopped-even with his eyes red from restraint and the veins standing out along his neck. He would only press his burning forehead into my shoulder and pant softly, “What’s wrong? Does it hurt?”

When I said continue, he gave himself to me without reservation.

The contrast between his public wildness and private surrender was astonishing. He enjoyed playing the tamed puppy who occasionally bared his teeth. I, in turn, found immense comfort and release in that secret sense of control.